


Twenty-Seven

by quigonejinn



Category: Captain America (Comics), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:04:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Triptych about Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, and the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty-Seven

**Author's Note:**

> Marvel movie universe riff on a post that I saw on my dash courtesy of [troublesteady](http://troublesteady.tumblr.com/post/42363065844/sometimes-youre-23-and-standing-in-the-kitchen-of).

Sometimes, you're twenty-seven and standing in the kitchen on the 42nd floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to you. Was the artist even born before you went into the ice? Probably not. This kind of music probably didn't even exist, and you’re just standing there, making breakfast, brewing coffee, listening. Thinking about work and missions and training, and also more exciting things like art you've seen recently, museums you'd like to visit, how much the New York of today reminds you of the New York you've always loved. Also, this friendship growing between you and the people you work with. 

Also, friendships that are fading from your memory. 

This is far less acceptable, and when you realize that you are slowly, inevitably, forgetting the past, you feel strange. Suddenly, your skin and the body it's stretched over feel wrong. Your shoulders are too wide; your muscles are too heavy. You look at the big, alien hand at the end of your right wrist, and you can’t understand how you got from being an underfed punk in a Brooklyn alley to this Manhattan kitchen with a beautiful view and expensive furniture and this fine, strong body. How did you survive the war? How did you survive the ice? You certainly outlived almost everyone you ever loved. But the song is almost over, and the coffee’s almost done, so you’re going to breathe in. You're going to breathe out. You're going to lean your hip against the granite counter top: when you were young, this stuff was cheap enough that they made curbstones out of it in Brooklyn. Now, they ship it from Brazil and polish it so that you can you see your face in it, along with the veins that look like they're made out of gold. You will get through this. Your innate common sense will keep you going, and if that doesn't do it, your serum-strengthened heart will. It worked through seventy-some years of the ice, didn't it? And here you are, forgetting Bucky. Forgetting your mother. Making yourself forget Pe -- 

The song is over. The coffee is done. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.

You reach up and get a cup. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the East River. 

...

Sometimes, you look twenty-seven and are standing in the kitchen on the 43rd floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. You're making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that brings a memory to the surface of your mind. Was the artist even born before you gave up pure kill missions? Probably not. You haven't done one in decades, and you listen to the song, trying to catch every crackle, every burst of static. There aren't many, because everything in the building is first-class, and that extends to sound systems. Plus, you bug your living quarters yourself. Insurance. Back up. Just in case. Even after all these years, you do good work, so you drink your coffee and look at the window. 

This isn't the first time you've stood in this spot and seen this view. After all, you live here. You've also been in this building at least three times before Tony Stark turned it over to the Avengers: once in the sixties, once in the nineties, once when you were Natalie Rushman. There are memories in your head that you suspect aren't yours because they have no foregrounding, no afterword. At this point in your life, though, what are you going to do? You see these memories, and you let them pass, like helicopters over the East River. You accept onto your own ledger the red that you inflict in them. 

First, last, regardless of whatever memories have been put in your head, irrespective of whatever you done to survive, you are your own woman. Through blood and tears, you stand on your own feet. 

The song is over. The coffee is done. You realize, with the experience of someone who has lived lifetimes as a _professional_ , that this sense of regret over what and, even more pressingly, _who_ you left behind -- it will pass in five minutes. 

You refill your coffee cup. 

...

Sometimes, you take a helicopter over the East River, and a coworker of yours is waiting at the C loading dock. He opens the door for you, and you slip inside, wearing the uniform of a delivery service. You take the elevator to the 44th floor. Floor heights are not quite standardized in Manhattan, but you have a good advance man, and all your things are ready and in place. You trace a circle on the glass with a diamond-tipped pane cutter, and wind whistles through the hole. You unzip a bag, then consider the world through the end of your scope. Your hands, flesh right and metal left, are steady. Why would you care? Why would you remember? After all, you recall your brief: the big blond man first, the small redhead to follow. 

This strange sense of almost, but not quite remembering, will pass in less than thirty seconds.

**Author's Note:**

> First, last, your own woman and the bit about having bugs in her own apartment is straight outta Marjorie Liu's Name of the Rose.


End file.
